Maocai, Bobo Chicken and Rabbit Head: Chengdu's Mala Street Food
World Travel 编辑部 · 2026-09-10 · 9 min read
Maocai, Bobo Chicken and Rabbit Head: Chengdu's Mala Street Food
Chengdu's relationship with chilli shows up in three street foods. Maocai is blanched to order, one portion at a time. Bobo chicken soaks its skewers cold in a seasoned broth. Rabbit head asks you to put politeness aside and gnaw. Together they set the mala undertone of the Chengdu street.
Maocai: hot pot for one
Maocai is a Chengdu snack that appeared in the early 1990s. Prepared vegetables and meat are steeped — "mao" — in a spicy base broth until cooked; the flavours run mala or xiangla, numbing-hot or fragrant-hot.
The ingredient list is almost open-ended: lotus root, potato, celtuce, cabbage, cucumber, winter melon, cauliflower, wood ear, enoki, oyster mushroom, shiitake, kelp, bamboo shoot, tofu, tofu skin, bean sprouts, sweet-potato noodles, rice jelly — and for meat, beef, tripe, pork aorta, gizzards, rabbit kidney, blood curd, duck intestine, ham sausage, quail egg, squid.
The cut ingredients go into a bamboo basket or metal sieve and are lowered into the boiling base to cook, lifted and dunked repeatedly so they heat evenly — that lifting is where "mao" comes from. The base is close to a hot pot base: broad bean paste, chilli, Sichuan pepper and ginger fried in oil with spices, then simmered with stock. It is served with a little of that broth and finished with sesame oil, minced garlic, spring onion, chopped celery and coriander, salt and MSG.
The difference from hot pot is clear: maocai is a single portion, the shop assembles and cooks it, and the bowl is already seasoned, so no dipping sauce is needed. Two cautions: much of the meat is frozen, so check it is properly cooked; and as with most Sichuan food the sodium is high — do not drink the broth.
Bobo chicken: cold skewers in a clay pot
Bobo chicken is a traditional Sichuan snack of the Sichuan school, defined by deboned chicken in a clay pot with a chilli dressing. The name comes from the pot itself — bobo.
It is the classic cold-pot skewer dish: ingredients are cooked first, then skewered and steeped in a chilli-oil or green-peppercorn broth, eaten cold or at room temperature. There are two classic flavours — chilli oil, fragrant and fiercely hot, and green peppercorn, a clear broth that is aromatic and gently numbing; best results need 20–30 minutes to several hours of soaking. The broth is built on chicken stock or mixed bone stock with dozens of spices. Chilli oil is the soul of it, often made by a "three-pour" method blending erjingtiao, facing-heaven and lantern chillies for colour, aroma and heat alike; green peppercorn oil is the other key, best from Hongya, prized for a fragrance that is numbing "without seeing the pepper".
It began with chicken alone and grew into dozens of meat and vegetable skewers; early on it was sold from shoulder poles and stalls, the essence of street life. The traditional home ground is the Meishan–Leshan area, where it has passed down for over a century since the Qing; it won a Chengdu individual-snack quality award in 1990 and was named an excellent Chengdu snack in 1991. It is often paired with milk-broth noodles.
Rabbit head: eat it with your hands
Rabbit head is a traditional Sichuan snack that originated in the Shuangliu district of Chengdu in the 1980s. With rabbit meat in heavy demand, the leftover heads were braised or stir-fried with Sichuan spices by local cooks and grew into a speciality.
The method usually starts with frozen, skinned rabbit heads, cured and blanched to remove any gaminess, then simmered in a braising liquid of broad bean paste, chilli, Sichuan pepper and spices. The key step is soaking after braising so the flavour penetrates; some versions stir-fry until the liquid reduces. The result is mala, fresh and fragrant, with tender meat. Eating it is a technique: the face, tongue and brain are taken apart and eaten in stages, sucking the braising juices as you go — which is why Chengdu people call it "gnawing the rabbit head".
How to order
- Maocai: pick your own ingredients, one portion is a meal; skip the broth
- Bobo chicken: priced per skewer, better the longer it soaks; try both the chilli-oil and green-peppercorn broths
- Rabbit head: sold spicy or five-spice — start with five-spice if unsure; eat face, tongue, then brain
- All three are street fast food, easy to fit between sights
Practical notes
- Maocai: from the early 1990s; single portion, shop-cooked, no dipping sauce
- Bobo chicken: the classic cold-pot skewer; chilli-oil or green-peppercorn, needs soaking
- Rabbit head: from 1980s Shuangliu; braised then soaked, spicy or five-spice
- Caution: maocai broth is high in sodium — best left undrunk
Related
- Chen Mapo Tofu: The Pot by Wanfu Bridge Since 1862
- Pixian Broad Bean Paste: The Soul of Sichuan Cooking
Photos
Sources
- Wikipedia: Maocai, Bobo chicken
- Baidu Baike: Bobo chicken, Rabbit head